Not my style of television, but I think it will find an audience.  More likely guys if there are enough fantasy-worthy gorgeous women (especially if they are interested in homely, normal-looking men).

It does sound a lot like Playmakers, which I thought was very good.  I watched it even though I don’t like football.  I never thought it was anything other than fiction, not a documentary.  Of course if you looked at the entire NFL population there would be drug-users and wife-beaters and husbands who slept around on their wives, but they had to be all on one team for the stories to work.  Anyone who thinks that a series like this is a representation of reality could buy some oceanfront property in Nevada from me any time they are interested in investing in unreal estate. 

(I don’t remember any strip-club shootings that paralyzed a bouncer or any dog-fighting in Playmakers, so in some ways I guess it was tamer than reality.)

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 11/25/07 at 11:26 AM ET

I believe that when Playmakers was running ESPN’s contract with the NFL was running out. ESPN was desparate to keep the NFL and was bending over backwards for the league. It would have been interesting to see whether the NFL would have cared as long as ESPN ponied up with the cash for the TV rights, but I think that’s what makes this a little different. Does the NHL have any real power over CBC?

Posted by Stevo on 11/25/07 at 11:50 AM ET

Again, to me, it’s a take-off of “Footballer’s Wives” from the BBC.  Remember that the CBC’s programming ties are just as closely related to what’s on the BBC as they are to what’s on CBS, NBC, ABC, or Fox. 

The only irony I find is that, while I have no doubt that infidelity, drug use, alcoholism, excessive partying, shacking up with puck bunnies, etc. are all within societal norms—i.e. all of that stuff happens, just as it happens to everybody else, and I’m sure that the fact that these guys are professional athletes makes the lure of partying with the VIP’s that much more interesting (Dan Cleary of all people will tell you that being a first-round draft pick with a big contract can go to your head as his reputation for partying was well-deserved, and there is, of course, the Brendan Shanahan story), but…

By and large, hockey players aren’t pretty bland in interviews for the hell of it.  Both the culture surrounding this game and the fact that so many of the guys really are from towns so small that you learn the hard way that your business becomes everybody’s business, fast—and even spending half a year of my life in Winnipeg and the farms outside town, I can tell you that the “bigger” towns are still places where things get around, fast.

Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 11/25/07 at 05:05 PM ET